Review: Thief

G'day there guys and gals!

In 1998, a revolution was taking place in the gaming industry, a change for the standard shooters of the times to a more quiet approach with a morality choice, one of the very first to do so. From Thief: The Dark Project to now the stand-alone title, Thief is one of 2014's most anticipated titles of the year and hoping to recapture a fanbase ten years in the making, while the title sat for five/six years to come from rumour to development and release. As a AAA title, does the game live up to the hype and anticipation?
The saddening truth is no, barely so for the fans.

Thief sets players in the role of Garrett, a Master Thief with years of experience who is jokingly named "Rat King" and the likes throughout the game. Taking a contract from his friend Basso, he travels with his underling Erin to a mansion, hoping to steal a particular item of interest, only to have the plan fail at his own hubris and Erin's childish nature. Returning to "The City", Garrett awakens to find a brutal man known as The Baron has taken control of the city, now riddled with a disease called The Gloom. It's up to you to solve the mystery of your disappearance and your new abilities.
While Thief offers a lot of places to explore, things to see/hear and a massive amount of collectibles, the lore of The City falls incredibly short and majorly effects the storyline. Quest items, plot points and even the point of traveling to your mission falls simply to "We need this to understand this.", repeating the entire way through the game. The storyline heavily suffers from the repetition as emotional points where the game tries to suck you in or at pivot points that redirect the story are lackluster. Unfortunately the fault for that falls to poor writing and voice acting. For example: while the game features free roaming and allowing players to openly loot houses and areas, each cutscene entering this area after a main mission is devastatingly repetitive; three times a character is hanged with the same animation, several times the Town Crier proclaims laws and the rest is usually either a slow pan of nothing or skipping the entire area completely. For a person trying to appeal to a crowd of TWO PEOPLE not to die is just ridiculous. "Should we hang this man?"
"Yeah, do it!" "Kill the thief!"

The cast of Thief, while mostly a mix of veteran and relatively new actors, is just a disappointment. Garrett's original voice actor Stephen Russell (best known for his roles in Fallout 3 and Elder Scrolls: Skyrim) was replaced with Romano Orzari, known for his role as Giovanni Auditore from Assassin's Creed 2. Flat, monotone and unemotional even in points where the game tries to connect you with the characters, many moments die before it gets the chance to connect or make an impact. Like some gamers, I play with subtitles on so that in case I mishear a word, I know what was said. It's incredibly hard to read when sentences fly in scene before the first word is uttered, especially annoying when Garrett is doing a slow, barely vocal monologue. The sad truth is I felt more emotion from side characters than I did to the main cast.
Gameplay is fun, and definitely attractive but is unfortunately gets repetitive much too fast. My advice is to buy tools as soon as possible: opening air grates or disabling traps opens new areas to sneak past enemies and is much more fun than actual combat, which of course the game doesn't promote. However if you give gamers the option to fight, even with the protagonist promoting fighting "I kill only when there's no other option", crippling gamers for choosing to do so isn't fair or tactical, especially when half of the titles in the series promote moral choices of whether or not to kill enemies. Fighting, climbing, navigating ect becomes nothing but button mashing, with combat being utterly dull without use of your Eye powers (You'll be unlocking the combat perks quickly, trust me) to insta-kill enemies to be over and done with it. What sounds simpler: twenty whacks with your climbing claw, using all your arrows in combat to kill one enemy or Eye power insta-kill? Sneaking does help this without using your Eye but this falls into the next flaw, which I'll mention in a moment. One issue I want to address is the navigation. While fun and useful, a lot of the climbing areas use small grates, which are useful, but it personally bugs me how they serve no function other than to boost you. Climbable pipes hold water, ropes haul boxes, but there's grates in the rock, serving no purpose. Did the thieves in the area go around and attach them to the walls for an item that is unique with only one in existence? Even Quick Time Events would have served more purpose and kept interest when even a scene in a main mission is simply hold L Trigger and running. Lastly, I want to mention the boss battles, to which you'll have around two/three. All but one, you do have the option to sneak past your enemy. Fighting your main antagonists, however, is just poor. Ten seconds and it's over with a cutscene that fails to deliver an emotional blow when the game clearly means to. The ending boss battle, if you can call it such, isn't a fight at all but more of a collecting mission, finishing off with a terrible two minute ending that is just weak and distasteful.

In your Options menu, there's the option to turn on your Kinect sensor. Don't do it. While there are no commands, the game picks up anything as a command to attract guards. Using Kinect commands such as "Xbox Record That" or "Xbox Snap" will alert any guards near you. Even coughing/sneezing will attract guards to you. If you have it on, make sure you stay quiet as a bug.
Sound effects and musical score are one of the only great qualities of the game, offering booming and exciting music to the scenery and appropriate sounds to your actions in game, really aiding gamers to feel more in the world. Graphics, also, are quite good and live up to the Next Gen world. The only issue this causes is effecting gameplay. "Hold" areas will appear often, needing you to open a window or push past fallen logs to progress. Unfortunately the game sneakily (No pun intended) loads during these moments. A lot of these areas will auto-fade to black but too often will you be mashing X for up to 30 seconds to progress, six times longer than usual. In particular areas also you will be seeing NPCs or enemies load in the map while exploring. One other dishonourable mention would be the viewing system. As a thief, the shadows are your friend but the viewing system ruins this concept. Even in darkness, if an enemy is facing your way, they'll eventually become suspicious. If you're standing near a light source staring into the dark, your pupils aren't dilated enough to see that far. In retrospect, some enemies will see you in the dark regardless but at least the humans shouldn't!

Fans of the series will definitely love this game regardless, but for it's many flaws and for a $100 price tag, it's debatable whether of not this game is worth the price. Recycled Competitive mode from in-story missions/microtransations (You're limited to TWO if you don't buy the extra), if you're going to base a game entirely on a storyline, you need to leave the player wanting more. While I have a great love for the gameplay and feel, one playthrough is enough. The only worthy quality of this game is that this gamer will be taking a leaf from Garrett's book and losing his memory, to which I will do so soon thanks to alcohol.

Out of 10, I give Thief a 4 out of 10

+Great graphics
+Musical score/sound effects set tone
+Few enjoyable moments/hilarious jump scares
+No major glitches = brownie points
-Story driven game with lackluster story
-Lots of collectables/readables, not enough lore
-Kinect WILL ruin your experience
-Cutscenes (Especially ending) ridiculous and choppy
-Side missions more enjoyable than main arc
-Combat is terrible; Too few retailers/usable items in missions
-Money WAY too easy to get
-Boss fights are simplistic/weak, 80% enemies overpowered
-Main voice cast acting = fingers on chalkboard

Thief is out now for the standard price of $100